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JERUSALEM — The relationship between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has oscillated between bitterness and embrace since Netanyahu regained power a year ago.
Biden initially denied his longtime foe traditional phone calls and visits to the White House to express his displeasure with Netanyahu's push to reform Israel's justice system. But after the October 7 Hamas attacks, he fully accepted the traumatized country, its war aims and its leader.
Now, as Israel's devastating war in Gaza enters its third month, the bitterness is returning.
Biden says 'indiscriminate bombing' in Gaza costs Israel support
Biden, in his harshest words yet, reiterated growing criticism of the staggering collateral damage of Israel's military attack on Hamas: more than 18,000 Gazans killed and an unprecedented humanitarian collapse.
In addition, the president personally criticized Netanyahu for “indiscriminate bombings” that undermined Israel's international support, arguing that the prime minister was beholden to the most radical members of his right-wing government.
“Bibi has a difficult decision to make,” Biden said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname at a fundraiser in Washington on Tuesday. “I think he needs to change, and this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move.”
Netanyahu responded with a quickly produced video in which he explicitly rejected one of the president's key proposals: reviving the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to take over government in Gaza after the war. Netanyahu recently signaled his intention to keep Israeli troops in Gaza indefinitely.
“I want to make my position clear – I will not allow Israel to repeat the Oslo mistake,” he said, referring to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were intended to provide a historic roadmap for peace between Israelis and Palestinians Palestinians allowed self-rule. The agreement is loathed by Israel's right wing.
“I will not allow us to bring people into Gaza who teach terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism, despite the enormous sacrifices made by our citizens and fighters,” he said.
After their release, an invisible chasm separates the Israeli hostage families
The dispute was cheered by Netanyahu's supporters, who rejected any calls from Biden or other leaders to withdraw from the military assault on Gaza until Hamas was eliminated as a fighting force. Some of Netanyahu's more radical allies, including Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have supported fringe demands that call for Israel to resettle Gaza forever.
Although Ben Gvir and his political partner and fellow settler leader Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, have been excluded from the emergency war cabinet that makes security decisions, the two continue to pressure Netanyahu to move to the right. The two led a drive this week to reject measures that would allow agricultural and construction workers from the Palestinian West Bank to re-enter Israel for the first time since October 7.
“This is a different group,” Biden said Tuesday. “Ben Gvir and Co. and the new people don’t want anything that even comes close to a two-state solution.”
Critics accused the prime minister of trying to bolster his base at the risk of straining relations with Israel's most important ally at a crucial moment in the war. Netanyahu has fallen sharply in the polls since Hamas' surprise rampage that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.
More than two-thirds of Israelis say they expect Netanyahu to take responsibility for failing to prevent the attacks and to leave office after the war ends. The Israeli media is full of reports of defections brewing within the prime minister's Likud party.
“Israel is at war and Netanyahu just started his re-election campaign,” read the headline of an analysis by Netanyahu biographer Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz on Tuesday.
Even some supporters rejected the prime minister.
“We are at war here,” Michael Oren, Netanyahu’s former ambassador to the United States, said in an interview on Wednesday. “This is not the time to be political.”
Biden is increasingly isolated over his full commitment to Israel's goal of eliminating Hamas, even as calls for a general ceasefire grow around the world. On Friday, the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution in the United Nations Security Council. On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of the same proposal in a non-binding manner.
“The only thing standing between us and an internationally mandated ceasefire is the president of the United States,” Oren said. “I cannot, for the life of me, see any national strategic interest in taking action against the Palestinian Authority [Palestinian Authority].”
Biden used the bulk of his remarks to reiterate Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas, and Oren said he did not believe the dispute would shake Biden's commitment to Israel's war goals.
“But it doesn’t help,” he said.
The relationship is clearly becoming more complicated as Israelis resist calls to roll back the Gaza campaign.
A billboard with Biden's image that hung for weeks across from the U.S. ambassador's residence in Jerusalem and read, “Thank you, Mr. President,” was replaced last week by a poster of Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who represents three university presidents Campus criticized for anti-Semitism.
Criticism of Biden is growing in Israel, but is still characterized by gratitude.
“We respect and appreciate the President of the United States,” Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said in a post on X. “But we live here… There will be no Palestinian state here. We will never return to Oslo.”
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, meanwhile, issued a statement on Wednesday saying any ceasefire would be a “gift” to Hamas. “Israel will continue the war against Hamas with or without international support.”
The cost of this war became much clearer when it was announced on Wednesday that Israeli forces had suffered one of their heaviest casualties in the Gaza Strip. Ten soldiers were reportedly killed the day before, including a senior officer from the elite Golani Brigade. More than 100 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive in Gaza began on October 27.
For Netanyahu, there may be no domestic downside to dismissing the Palestinian leadership or the idea that an independent Palestine is even remotely possible. He has worked for years to eliminate that possibility, pursuing policies that divided Palestinians between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. His most radical allies are more vocal, but their goals and his are broadly aligned, critics say.
In the general public, it had been years since the two-state solution was seen by Israelis or Palestinians as much more than just an artifact of long, failing peace negotiations. Now the idea is met with even more distrust in Israel, making it easy for Netanyahu to seize on it to win support.
According to Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, this has worked for him for years.
“Netanyahu began his career a generation ago, building on the Israeli public’s fears about the Oslo process and the Palestinian Authority,” Plesner said. “Thirty years later, the issue is not much different. Right now, Israelis fear that if the Palestinians have control of the territory, it will end with Israelis being murdered and massacred.”